[dazzer1975]

Have a 2 year old dimension e521 which is getting a touch long in he tooth now.

uses an amd athlon dual core 64 bit chip but using windows vista 32 bit and 4 gig of ram albeit only 3 recognised.

Currently using ati adeon x1300 pro but would like to upgrade this to something with a bit more oomph, somewhere between the 50 to 100 uk pound.

Any and all suggestions welcome.

Also, if someone was thinking about a pc based rig, would a sound card really matter if using a usb dac or should I try to find a soundcard with optical output to use in conjunction with an opitcal dac?

 

[cash68]

Just get a nice normal soundcard. As for videocard, PCI is pretty old now. If I remember right the 5700LE or Radeon 9100 were some of the best PCi cards back in the day, I don't remember though.

 

[dazzer1975]

yer I have noticed everything seems to be pci express or socket 777 (or whatever?) its only 2 years old this pc though so why it came with pci I dont know?
Thanks for the suggestions though, I will check em out.

 

[iriverdude]

Are you sure it's PCI? That's going back to even to Pentium II era for graphic slots. I've got a Socket 939 AMD dual core and that's got two PCI-E x16 slots. As for GPU choice you don't want anything too high in power consumption as you could overload your PSU. If you're not gaming I'd look at one around £50/£60

 

[MaZa]

A computer that new (2 years isnt that old) should have an AGP slot atleast! Nvidia 6800GT AGP version is quite decent, though there might be better ones too,

 

[iriverdude]

Talking of which it's amazing I still can play latest games. AMD X2 4400, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 8800GT 512MB. Fear 2, 4XAA, 16XAF, 1920x1200 all settings totally maxxed out. Smooth as silk. Same for Call of Duty World At War, similar settings. Also with Fall Out 3 maxxed out at 1920x1200 except no AA seems to cause quite a framerate drop.

I really don't think you have to upgrade as often as you thought you would need to.

If it's AGP I'd look for second hand.

 

[chesebert]

Geforce 8500GT around 3000 in 3dmark2006; comparing to 1100 in 3dmark06 with x1300, 8500GT is at least 3X as fast.

wow..that was a waste of time; OP you have 1 pci-e, get Radeon 4870 w/ 1GB and call it a day.

 

[dazzer1975]

ok guys,

appreciate the input and feedback on this. I had the side of my case open and noticed I had 2 ram sockets free (hence the upgrade in ram) and have 2 pci (e) sockets free. I don't have the original documentation the pc came with (bought from dell who usually only provide one printed sheet with details) so tried comparing pics online with the free ports/ssockets I had and determined they were pci... lol

Hmm, maybe a pci express then, it was bought in april 2007 new direct from dell so I suppose if pci is that old then it wont be that. Which would be good as pcie is everywhere (as it will be if thats the current norm)

iriverdude, good point about the psu, I am not a hard core gamer, but do a lot of multitasking so I was thinkign an upgraded grfx card along with the ram will give my system a good general boost... not looking for cutting edge grfx capabilities per se but I did want a reasonable spec card. I never considered overloading the psu.

I think the wisest thing would be to try and confirm from dell exactly what it is I have and progress from there.

Really appreciate the replies though you guys have helped enormously, thanks for that.

 

[MaZa]

If you can take a photo of the motherboard so we can be sure if you have PCIe slots or not. If you have, you can get a very good GPU. ATI HD4870 or HD4850 being ones. Though you should have atleast 500W quality PSU so they would be reliable.

 

[dazzer1975]

cool ok, I am at my girlfriends right now, but I should be home tomorrow and will take a couple of pics, maybe see what psu I have too?

Thanks for the offer of taking a look.

 

[Fuzzy OneThree]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaZa /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you can take a photo of the motherboard so we can be sure if you have PCIe slots or not. If you have, you can get a very good GPU. ATI HD4870 or HD4850 being ones. Though you should have atleast 500W quality PSU so they would be reliable.

Doubtful. I have a very similar computer (intel version) and I have a 300W PSU. If he is lucky, he will have, at most, a 350W power supply that would barely allow for something like a 9600GT

 

[MaZa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fuzzy OneThree /img/forum/go_quote.gif Doubtful. I have a very similar computer (intel version) and I have a 300W PSU. If he is lucky, he will have, at most, a 350W power supply that would barely allow for something like a 9600GT

Yeah, but switching PSUs isnt difficult. Something like Corsair HX520 is very good PSU and relatively cheap. If one decides to upgrade seriously graphics card, PSU upgrade is a must. Thats the way it is, they are more powerhungry.

 

[iriverdude]

Quote:

iriverdude, good point about the psu, I am not a hard core gamer, but do a lot of multitasking so I was thinkign an upgraded grfx card along with the ram will give my system a good general boost

I know Vista uses GPU 3D functions but unsure you'll notice any difference between ATI 1300 and a better card just within Windows, in XP you won't.

As for replacing PSU he's got a Dell, it may have own stupid cases size or connectors.

 

[Zorander]

Here is the OP's computer specs to help clear some confusion:

Dell Dimension E521 Product Details

For one, the video card slot available to the OP is PCI-e x16 (not the ancient PCI!) and PSU power is an indicated 305W (not sure if this is standard form or otherwise).

As for upgrading, I will leave the suggestions to others but keep in mind (to the OP) what you want to achieve from the upgrade. Consider the programs that will particularly benefit from it (be it games, 3D rendering software, photo-editors, etc); don't upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. From the look of it, you do not need a high-end card. Which is good since they generally run hot, demand high PSU power and are consequently noisy.

Cheers!

 

[obobskivich]

photo-editing software doesn't benefit one lick from a better GPU, excepting Adobe CS4 with special plug-ins to run CUDA/Brook+ (or whatever the new name is? QuickSilver/Stream/etc) on Quadro/Tesla/FireGL/FireStream

as far as the 305W PSU, some older Dell PSUs were PCP&C factory jobs, and massively under-rated (hence weird #'s from time to time), others are cheap OEM boxes which barely delivery advertised power, the weird connectors are (afaik) a thing of the past, but iriver does make a good point (it was a very common quirk/issue ~2004-2005)

high end GPU being hot/power hungry/noisy

I've currently got the king of high end graphics cards (ok, its #2 if you really wanna split hairs) and its quieter than the board it replaced (or the one before that), by a good margin, it can get fairly warm, but nothing dangerous (GPUs are designed for higher thermal envelopes than GPCPUs or primative hardware), so I think the stereotype of loud/hot/etc is a bit dated

@ maza:
you aren't at all required to upgrade PSU for graphics upgrade, again, nice stereotype

@ op (finally):
I'd get a good image of what you want the thing to do, whats the goal in upgrading, what are you trying to run?

things a better graphics actually influences:
3D gaming
rendering software (take this with a HUGE grain of salt, consumer cards don't have the proper driver kit to do this "professionally" for various reasons, also, the frame buffer is usually a tad small for modern jobs)
HD video content (again, huge grain of salt, you don't need any massive GPU to accelerate this, just something with h/w offload)


with that in mind, if you aren't gaming, I wouldn't be upgrading, because its wasted cash (quite honestly)